Love Charms and Other Catastrophes (21 page)

Ken nodded, his expression grave. “I understand.”

Hijiri didn't see how.

“Have you ever had a missed connection?” he asked her.

Up until last year, boys didn't even notice her. Her heart never once skipped a beat when spying a cute guy from across a crowded room. Probably because she stayed away from crowded rooms on principle. “Never,” she said.

Ken had moved to pick up a few books from the cart. When she answered, his hands twitched. The books scattered like startled pigeons from his grip.

Hijiri bent to pick up some of the books.

He smiled weakly. “Sorry. It's just that … it's sad.”

“It's not an experience I need,” she said. “Don't be upset on my part. We have something in common. You haven't had a missed connection either.”

Ken smoothed the pages of a bent turnip cookbook. He didn't say anything.

“Don't worry,” she said, babbling. “A missed connection can happen any second.”

Ken stood up and placed the book with its fallen brethren on the circulation desk. “I've been too busy looking at you. How could I notice another girl like that?”

Stop saying those things
, she thought, pressing a hand over her loud heart.
Charm-boy. Puzzle-boy, Fake-boy.
The nicknames did nothing to soften the sound of her heartbeat.

Ms. Ward watched the exchange with growing interest. She hadn't even bothered to help pick up her poor books. “Wouldn't it be nice,” she said, “if there was a way to surmount that problem?”

“That's why love charm-making is so intriguing to me,” Hijiri said. “Most of the time, romance doesn't work out. It's just a fact of life. But I want to fight for other people's happy endings. I want to help them get there, instead of…”

“Missing them?” A smile ghosted Ken's lips.

Hijiri nodded.

“I wish there was something we could do,” he said. “Second chances don't come easily.”

Her heart thumped harder, a wild beat that flooded her ears. She didn't have time to think about his words because they triggered something.

An idea.

A love charm idea.

“What if I could?” Hijiri whispered.

Ken looked at her sharply.

Hijiri stared at him in wonder. Did he realize how important this moment was?
Did he?
Her mouth wouldn't echo the exhilaration in her veins.

“What's going on in there?” he said, gently tapping her temple with his finger.

She grabbed his wrist and held on tight. “A charm.
The
charm.”

*   *   *

“Watch me, Love,” Hijiri said, rolling up her sleeves. She opened her gateleg table all the way and began sketching her idea on a piece of drafting paper that Ken had given her. The paper was thin, almost like a cloud pressed into solid form, and Hijiri thought of the twins as she scribbled over every inch of the paper. The duality of the charm would be difficult to marry, but once she did it …

She worked long into the night, drawing charts and sifting through her collection of glass bottles to find the shape she liked best. When her stomach whined, she stood at the kitchen counter and ate trail mix with salty cashews and raisins. Around midnight, her hair got in the way, so she pulled it into a loose bun that started coming apart seconds after she made it.

At three in the morning, she heard a knock on her door. Hijiri rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and answered the door.

Standing unabashedly in his pajamas, Ken gave a drowsy hello. “Figured you were awake.”

Hijiri opened the door wider. “Could you hear me all the way from your room?”

“I didn't need to. The look on your face when we left the library was enough,” Ken said. “Show me what you've done.”

Fatigue melted off her bones when his eyes met hers.
He's serious. He really wants to know
, she thought. Her heart hummed. Her toes curled.

“The love charm is going to be a communication device made of memories and wishes. It's beautifully complicated, and if I can pull it off, I can give people more than just hope. They might find their almost-loves again.”

“Almost-loves.” He squeezed her hand, his voice breathless. “I know you can do it.”

Her faith in herself had been crumbly at best these past few weeks. This was the first night in weeks she felt grounded, full of purpose. “When Zita controlled the town, she had that loom that everyone's hearts were attached to. And it makes me believe that our hearts can be tangled and tied to each other, no matter how far apart we are. If I can tap into those threads, I can access a line of communication between hearts. My charm will connect missed connections.”

The simpler she could make the love charm, the better. She showed Ken the green glass bottles she had collected over the years and how they would be the items she'd craft the charm around. “Like throwing a message in a bottle into the sea,” she explained.

Ken picked a bottle and closed one eye to look inside it. “Where's the letter going to go?”

“I'm thinking of including a standard message saying ‘Hello Again' and instructions on how to respond. When they uncork the bottle, what's going to hit them first is the heart's memory.”

“So the person who receives the bottle will be able to see the missed connection?”

“Just like experiencing a daydream from the sender's point of view. With the sender's feelings.”

Ken smiled softly. “Sounds brilliant. Where do you start?”

Hijiri turned back to the table to hide another blush. Why was her skin reacting like that? It wasn't like Ken had never complimented her before. In fact, he did it too much. “I need to dissect some long-distance-relationship love charms to get the mechanics of my own charm right. I believe they usually work by using an invisible bond. If I tweak that, I can probably reach the heart's thread.”

“How will you test it?”

“I need a volunteer,” she said. “Do you think Ms. Ward would be agreeable? She has more missed connections than anyone I know.”

“Sure,” Ken said.

“I hope she wants to know what happened to her almost-loves.”

Ken's smile fell away. He lowered his lashes, reaching for her hand. He rubbed his thumb against the inside of her wrist. “Anyone would.”

Hijiri watched his thumb, barely breathing. Fallon had told her to listen to her heart and her heart had been talking a lot lately. In thumps and rattles and electric shocks that set her cheeks aflame. It was saying one thing:
I think I could love this boy if he was real
.

If he was real.

That was a problem her tiny heart hated.

 

Chapter 15

THEY SAY LOVESICKNESS IS INCURABLE

Hijiri needed to talk with Love. She didn't sleep at all, crafting her prized charm, and left the complex at dawn that Sunday. There was only one place she could think of going.

Many of Grimbaud's parks were small, nook-like escapes, but the largest park held the famous statue
Love Being Cherished.
After Zita had tried to remove it last year, the statue grew in popularity, rivaling even the Tunnel of Love. The rest of the park had been refurbished after the return of the statue. Cobblestone paths led to weeping willows and rose-covered arbor hideaways, while heart-shaped bushes and trees looked on. Coins glittered in the fountain.

Hijiri approached the statue, craning her neck to admire the details. Made of marble, the statue featured three figures. In the center was Love, a naked, curvy woman with a waterfall of hair. The teenagers on either side of Love had different stories to tell. The girl kissed Love's cheek, unafraid of loving, wanting whatever blessings she could hold in her outstretched hands. The boy on the left was meek and sorrowful, carrying a poetry book and roses speckled with his marble tears.

The girl's bravery was admirable, but not as interesting as the boy. “You're more inspiring,” she told the marble boy, reaching to touch the roses. “There's something in you to fix. The girl's okay already.”

She wished the statue would give her more ideas.

Love's marble eyes stared back at her.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

Where was Love now? Snoring in the last train car? Hitchhiking the highways of the world? Taking inventory, wherever it was. She wondered how Love measured its success. The amount of couples, perhaps, or maybe broken hearts.

“Will you count me as a success?” Hijiri asked. No one was around, so she raised her voice at the statue. “You haven't won yet. Ken is still a puzzle I'm going to solve. Thank you for the challenge, but I don't intend to lose my heart in the process.”
Not completely.

Leaves rattled like laughter against the cobblestones. Hijiri flushed with shame. She knew she was lying, but to say it out loud? She rubbed her arms to dispel the chill.

Hijiri had gotten comfortable with thinking her heart had no room for more love. Of course her heart was too small; that explained why she never had nor wanted a second date and why she was always so bored with the boys who were interested in her—until Ken came along. The box she always shoved her heart into wasn't holding it anymore.

So she tried pleading one more time.

“Make him give me my heart back,” she said brokenly.

A sense of unease rippled through her. Goose pimples covered her skin. Her insides felt colder than the wind tossing her hair. Hijiri looked around her, expecting to see a sign: maybe a stone cupid pointing its arrow at her, or a stork strutting through the grass.

Instead, something slapped the back of her head. Hijiri flinched and grabbed at whatever it was, feeling the crunch of paper between her fingers. A flyer. It had only one sentence, printed in typewriter font:

STOFFEL'S HUGS HEAL HEARTS

The flyer made her skin crawl. Hijiri shoved it in her coat pocket rather than tossing it back on the ground for someone else to find. She rubbed her hands on her jeans. The park was as empty as it was seconds ago, but she still felt
something
there. Watching her.

Hijiri heard her own shallow breathing as she backed away from the statue. The wind picked up, blowing her hair to the side and stinging her exposed neck with cold.

Something creaked behind her.

When she turned, she saw four trees covering a path with shadows. Three of the trees were heart-shaped, but the other …

It was
not
a tree.

Hijiri squinted into the shadows. What she saw made her tremble.

Tall as the laurel trees it stood with, the thing had a wide chest and a heart for a head. From the waist down, its endoskeleton was exposed.

“A robot?” she whispered. A very poor one.

Whoever designed the robot had attempted to go for a child-friendly look. The robot's head was a big heart with rosy cheeks, tiny, electric-red eyes, and a red mouth opened in delight. The hands were covered with white gloves, its chest in squishy-soft material. The endoskeleton was a nightmare; tears and rips along the surface of the robot's upper body gave her a clue that it was capable of moving.

“Stoffel,” she said, inching backward. Was
that
its name?

Stoffel walked toward her with a fluidity that didn't make sense coming from a broken-looking robot. Hijiri felt a familiar tingle on her skin. A complicated charm had to be behind the robot's ability to move.
Move?
she thought, panic rising.
It probably does more than that.

She finally found her legs and started running.

Stoffel chased after her. It creaked and sparked, metal feet crushing the grass.

Hijiri pumped her legs faster and crossed the cobblestones, leaping over a row of shrubs to lose the robot in the heavily gardened corners of the park. Rough leaves scraped her jeans. She didn't care if she was trampling flowers or bending the love-themed topiaries.

Behind her, Stoffel snapped the topiaries into pieces to reach her.

Think. Can I use anything on me?
Hijiri thought, mentally searching through her pockets. She had the flyer, a compact mirror … did she have glitter? Hijiri slowed down long enough to feel around in her coat pockets, mistaking a tin of lip balm for her silver glitter. Just for a second.

“Yes,” she hissed, palming the compact mirror and opening the lid of the glitter with her thumb. Carrying the ingredients for her Blinded by Love charm with her had become almost compulsory. She never thought about it.

Hijiri sprinted to the fountain, her lungs screaming for air. At the last minute, she spun to the right, spraying the surface of her mirror with glitter, and blew. The love charm worked as it always had, blinding anything in its path with light.

Stoffel tried to grab her, but its arms came just short of her. Those little red eyes were unaffected by the glare of the charm. Its mouth widened, spilling hundreds of flyers:
STOFFEL'S HUGS HEAL HEARTS. STOFFEL'S HUGS HEAL HEARTS. STOFFEL'S HUGS HEAL HEARTS.

Hijiri raised her arm to shield herself from the onslaught of flyers. Stoffel's hand clamped down on her forearm; she gasped and tried to pry her arm away, but its grip was too strong. “Let go,” she cried. Her mind frantically scrambled for names to call.

“Ken,” she screamed, kicking at its knee, exposed wiring and all. A knee that was attached to a leg that should not, under logical circumstances, have been able to move on its own.

Stoffel's other hand gripped her waist; it pulled her off her feet and muffled her scream when her cheek connected with the robot's chest. Stoffel's arms wrapped around her in a hug.

The hug only lasted a few seconds, but the charm attached to the robot flowed into her. Every nerve ending felt on fire. Hijiri's tiny heart started to ache—small pangs of hurt, growing bigger and bigger until she started crying. When Stoffel set her back down, she couldn't stand.